The guttering candles weakly illuminated the small hall and the frame of a slight and elderly woman hunched forward and alone upon an ornately carved high back chair standing elevated upon on a dais. A breath rattled in her lungs and her body was weak and sallow, her hands almost skeletal gripping the arms of the chair tightly and where she held them thin trails of blood could be seen to have been weeping and slowly meandering to the floor of the dais through parts of the detailed carvings that graced the chair and seeping into the varnished oak to form a dark and telling stain.

As the last rays of the sun slipped below the horizon and the faint tendrils of dusk faded away as her image shuddered, for a moment the world there stopped and the candles were still their flames frozen as a ghostly figure sat in the chair over laying the lady’s form. Her eyes opened, her image became her own and the world continued once more.

The woman rose, weak but with an air and grace crafted of pure resolve, she slowly with small aged steps began to descend the dais.

The widow wept as her marriage began.

***

The small band of brothers carried the broken form of the fallen Aaron as they stepped back to the now familiar henge elevated from the Silver Road. Behind them one by one came an equally small number of figures, battered, bruised, displaying signs of torn armour, untended wounds and dented shields.

As the last figure stepped through and tipped his hat in greeting the robed figure standing with his arms aloft at the centre of the henge slumped to the ground, the two leather clad men rushed to his side one offering water while the other cradled him up right.

As the brothers looked out beyond the henge they could see the last corona of dusk seeping along the horizon. Their eyes strained until they could see the dark outline of the keep that many of them had dwelled within over the past two months and raising their brother aloft on the bier they had fashioned began their slow return.

***

The creature rolled the small cracked crystal vial between her broken fingers of shattered stone. The prize had been agreed, the price had been paid though it had been a heavy one and there would be the need for further bargains and prices as a result.

For a moment anger flared in her eyes as her pain wracked body reminded her of the agonies it would yet impart. She let the blackened branches of the rotting oak bend over her like a shield as she reclined in it's boles. Slowly the fingers closed around the vial, pressure building gently as the numerous cracks weakened and the vial broke like the shell of a shattered quail’s egg. The fluid within began to trickle along the contours of her closed stone hand and seep between her fingers. She raised her closed hand close to her face and inhaled deeply, slowly she opened her hand fully gazing at her shattered palm and long fingers darkened by the vials contents, then like a feral creature cleaning itself her tongue slowly, carefully licked each and every drop from her form savouring the sensation as her tongue lacerated on the crystal fragments and crunched beneath her teeth.

The creature sat, in her place, she could sense the power beyond that which was taken from her at the Dawn. The creature sensed the ties strengthen as the bond was formed like a shadow within her shadow, it was unsettling but knew this was a cloak she would learn to shed.

It’s coming home, the strength of the world is returning and with it freedom and power.